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Dora Wordsworth
Dorothy "Dora" Wordsworth (16 August 1804 - 9 July 1847) was the only surviving daughter of William Wordsworth (1770-1850), major Romantic poet and British Poet Laureate. Life Overview Dora, the 2nd child of William Wordsworth, was born in August 1804. She was named after Dorothy Wordsworth, her father's sister. By way of distinguishing her from her aunt, Crabb Robinson used to call her "Dorina." The same writer calls her the "joy and sunshine" of the poet, who saw in her an harmonious blending of the characteristics and lineaments of his wife and sister. "Dora," he wrote in 1829, "is my housekeeper, and did she not hold the pen it would run wild in her praises." She published in 1847 (2 volumes 8vo, Moxon) A Journal of a Few Months' Residence in Portugal, and Glimpses of the South of Spain, dedicated to her father and mother. Wordsworth's later poems contain several allusions to Dora, and she is celebrated in particular along with Edith Southey and Sara Coleridge in "The Triad." She died at Rydal Mount on 9 July 1847, and was buried in Grasmere churchyard (Gentleman's Magazine 1847, ii. 222; Lee, Dorothy Wordsworth, 1886, 144; Crabb Robinson, Diary, iii. 193, 294−6). Richard Garnett, "Quillinan, Edward," in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 47 (edited by Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1896, 92-96. Biography Dora, the daughter of Mary (Winn, and William Wordsworth, was born in Cumberland.Dora Wordsworth, Geni.com. Web, Mar. 20, 2018. Her babyhood inspired Wordsworth to write "Address To My Infant Daughter."[http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww265.html Address To My Infant Daughter] at bartleby.com As an adult, she is further immortalised by him in the 1828 poem "The Triad",Furr, Derek, [http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap//romtext/articles/rt15_n03.html The Perfect Match: Wordsworth's The Triad and Coleridge's Garden of Boccaccio In Context] In 1843, at the age of 39, Dora Wordsworth married Edward Quillinan, against her father's wishes. Throughout her life, she formed intense romantic attachments to both genders, the most significant being her friendship with Maria Jane Jewsbury.Jones, Katherine, [http://www.kathleenjones.co.uk/books/sisterhd.html Introduction to the Passionate Sisterhood] Another close friend was Maria Kinnaird, adoptive daughter of Richard "Conversation" Sharp and the future wife of Thomas Drummond. Dora and Maria were friends from their teenage years and some of their correspondence has survived.MS University Library, Davis, California. also, reproduced with permission in Knapman, D. - Conversation Sharp - The Biography of a London Gentleman, Richard Sharp (1759-1835), in Letters, Prose and Verse. Publication, 2004). Available at British Library. Described by her aunt and namesake Dorothy Wordsworth as "at times very beautiful",Dorothy Wordsworth to Jane Marshall, letter dated 19 December 1809, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Ed. Ernest de Selincourt. 2 parts. Part 1: The Middle Years, 1806–1811. Revised by Mary Moorman. Part 2: The Middle Years, 1812–1820. Revised by Mary Moorman and Alan G. Hill. Dora was devoted to her father and a significant influence on his poetry. Their relationship was particularly close, with Coleridge's son Hartley describing how she "almost adored" him in an 1830 letter.Hartley Coleridge, Letters, 112 (30 August 1830). However, Dora also had literary abilities of her own, publishing a travel journal. Sara Coleridge complained after Dora's death that her father's demands on her "frustrated a real talent".Introduction to Letters of Dora Wordsworth, 11. The travel journal is Journal of a Few Months' Residence in Portugal, and Glimpses of the South of Spain, 2 vols. (London: Edward Moxon, 1847). Dora died of tuberculosis at her parents' home, and is buried in the graveyard of St Oswald's Church, Grasmere, Cumbria along with her parents and siblings, aunt Sarah Hutchinson and [[Hartley Coleridge], son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Poets' Graves, William Wordsworth Recognition After her death, her distraught father (who had already lost 2 of his children to illness), planted hundreds of daffodils in her memory in a field beside St Mary's Church, Rydal.St Mary's Church, Rydal The site, Dora's Field, where daffodils are still cultivated today is now owned by the National Trust.Dora's Field with picture References External links *"The Poets' Daughters: Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge" Category:1804 births Category:1847 deaths Category:Deaths from tuberculosis Category:Infectious disease deaths in England Category:English children Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Category:Wordsworth family